Mora County

MORA —Merl Witt, president of the Saint Vrain Mill Preservation and Historical Foundation, recently announced that the first most significant step in the restoration of the St. Vrain Mill — stabilization of the foundation — has just been completed.

More than 150 years ago, Ceran St. Vrain commissioned the building of his stone mill (Molino de Piedra) at a site located along the northern edge of the Village of Mora.

I t is time to saddle up and get down to business — oh yes! That is an expression my moher used way too often when speaking to my sweet brother, Bill and me when we were kids. We understood the expression completely and we weren’t about to try anything stupid like disobeying her.

I will be the first to admit that for the first 12 or so years of my life I never understood why there was so much “hoopla” and celebration in other peoples’ lives on New Year’s Eve. I don’t remember ever even being awake at that supposedly magic hour called midnight.

Sweet brother Bill and I grew up across the driveway from our hospital complex at Valmora.

The days may be warm and sunny, but the nights are cool to colder and the killing frosts are imminent.And that also translates into the ranch cows knowing it is time to head back into warmer climes. The cows have been up in our high mountain clearings all summer.

Yes, here at Gascon we have a national weather service recording station.

Our station number is 29-3488-02 and we record that 24-hour maximum and minimum temperatures, precipitation (time of day/night and amount) and whether we have experienced fog, ice pellets, glaze, thunder, hail, damaging winds, plus the time of these observations and snow depth in the winter.